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Lafayette’s classes are each an hour and a half long with no break aside from our 20-minute long lunch. That’s a lot of nonstop work for one day. Many people, with no affiliation with Lafayette ,assume that we have some sort of free period or study hall, which really makes you question why we don’t have one.

Having a free period would improve the sleep patterns of our student body. It is recommended that teens get 8-10 hours of sleep every night. Although we can encourage these behaviors all we want, we can’t change the fact that many students pull all-nighters to finish their homework or stay up until 3 A.M. playing video games. A free period would give these kids a chance to rest, so that they’re not completely sleep deprived.

Many students take AP courses or other classes with a heavy workload and don’t have time to finish all of their work at home. LHS Sophomore Annabelle Gunning says, “A free period would help a lot. I don’t get home until almost 6 every night and then I’m doing homework until almost 9. A free period would help me have more time after school.” While they could come in before school starts or stay after to finish working, many students aren’t able to do this and a free period would ensure that these students get the time that they need in order to finish their homework.

Even if a student manages to keep up with their school work and get a healthy amount of sleep, that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a break as well.  While there are only 4 classes per day, a student may have homework in a few of their other classes on top of the potential homework they have for classes that day. It’s also nice to have a mental health break, and while they could take a day off school for a mental health break, many parents don’t allow their kids to do that. Plus, that would cause them to fall behind in the classes they missed that day, so a free period would allow for more of the “me time” that all of us need.

It’s also possible that having a free period would decrease the number of kids who skip class. If students had a chance to catch up with friends or just not be productive for an hour and a half, many students who regularly skip class wouldn’t see a reason to skip.

A free period might also help lower the high concentration of students in our classrooms. Since this would add an extra class period to the day and more places to go, there would be more places to put students instead of cramming 30 kids into what’s practically a storage closet. Jessie Clark Middle School is currently experiencing issued of overpopulation and most of them will attend Lafayette once they reach high school. Therefore, our current issues of overpopulation are  only going to get worse and we need a place to put all these extra kids.

In conclusion, a free period is not only ideal, but crucial to life here at Lafayette, and the administration should take action as soon as possible.